Limit Theory Forums

[Josh] Friday, April 6, 2018

Re: [Josh] Friday, April 6, 2018

Posted: Wed Apr 11, 2018 6:26 am

by The Monk

Long term lurker here. I've been following this project with great interest for years. It fascinates and inspires me as a gamer, as a programmer, and as a human being. I'm actually not even sure the game will be for me when it's finished, but the path there is very interesting!

I've been tempted to intervene many times before, but always stayed out of it, out of shyness I suppose, but also out of deep respect for Josh doing his own thing his own way. For instance, back when Josh was trying to mod a rusty old tractor called Python into a speedy Corvette, I was silently facepalming and thinking to myself "FFS Josh, why don't you just do as much as possible in C, then use Luajit for scripting stuff, paying close attention to what code constructs Luajit can actually JIT?! Why are you wasting all this energy going down dead ends you damn well KNOW are dead ends if you're just being honest with yourself?!"

But I said nothing. Kind of cruel, really, since Josh was at his wits end and begged for a hint on how to solve his performance problems. However, I didn't want to be the one to deprive him of the privilege of making mistakes! Josh is on a path of achieving MASTERY, and that means he must sometimes learn things the hard way, so he learns them well. If he had been sent on the correct path at once by some helpful know-it-all, then he wouldn't have truly learned anything! By "wasting energy", he eventually came to understand the problems involved on a deep level. He now knows not only that Python is the wrong tool for the job, but WHY it is so. His instinct in choosing the right path forward has been greatly honed by his (many) detours into dead ends.

His instinct for solving technical problems has been greatly honed anyway. His instinct for project management is another thing altogether...

And so I finally decided to add my two cents:

Dear Josh,

it had been a pleasure to follow you through your struggles. You have bravely embarked on a fantastic journey of learning and self discovery, and for that I admire and respect you. HOWEVER, you have also made a promise to other people to deliver something shiny! And to be able to deliver on your promise, you need to STAY FOCUSED ON THE TASK AT HAND!

When you are five years into a project and a New Cool Idea for what the project could become instead pops into your mind, then you need to write down that idea for later, not push back release further by diving into it right away! "Trailer parks in space" is definitely a cool idea, and it fits well with the game you're making. But you are simply too far into development to expand the scope at this point! You need to focus on the core idea you had to begin with and make sure you deliver on that. Take a deep breath, and REMEMBER what your game was supposed to be when you started. That's the game you're making here!

Trailer parks is a great idea, for a later expansion. This game of yours has great potential to become a modder's paradise, and could well develop a loyal gaming community that plays it for 10 years or more. There WILL be a proper time to add trailer parks, but that time is not now!

I'm not personally invested in whether you ever deliver this game or not, I haven't supported the project financially, and I'm not super excited about this kind of game in the first place, not being a great fan of strategy games. I'm mostly just here for the drama! But I do wish to see you succeed, because I think you deserve it!

Just chalk this rant up as another vote against expanding scope at this point.

Re: [Josh] Friday, April 6, 2018

Long term lurker here. I've been following this project with great interest for years. It fascinates and inspires me as a gamer, as a programmer, and as a human being.

I'm not personally invested in whether you ever deliver this game or not, I haven't supported the project financially, and I'm not super excited about this kind of game in the first place, not being a great fan of strategy games.

These two sentences don't really match up. I'm not sure how you can be "not personally invested" and "not super excited" while being fascinated and inspired "as a gamer, as a programmer, and as a human being."

I'm mostly just here for the drama!

That doesn't sound like a particularly healthy reason to follow the development of anything, but it's especially odd to cite as a reason for following LT given that there are games that generate far more drama than this does.

Re: [Josh] Friday, April 6, 2018

Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2018 5:33 am

by Distant

People may have missed Lindsey's tweet:
"For personal reasons, I'm not going to be able to keep up with my blog or Patreon, so I'm going to suspend my Patreon for now."

Combined with what Josh said at the start of this dev log, and I think it's clear they're dealing with some very personal stuff right now. Absolutely won't pry, but wanted to let people know.

Hopefully things get better or you get the time you need to deal with what you need to deal with. Best wishes.

Re: [Josh] Friday, April 6, 2018

Long term lurker here. I've been following this project with great interest for years. It fascinates and inspires me as a gamer, as a programmer, and as a human being.

I'm not personally invested in whether you ever deliver this game or not, I haven't supported the project financially, and I'm not super excited about this kind of game in the first place, not being a great fan of strategy games.

These two sentences don't really match up. I'm not sure how you can be "not personally invested" and "not super excited" while being fascinated and inspired "as a gamer, as a programmer, and as a human being."

Being "personally invested" = OMG, I want to play this game so badly, can't it be done already!

Being "fascinated and inspired as a gamer, as a programmer, and as a human being" = finding the discussions about game design interesting, finding the technical struggles in the development process interesting, and finding the human angle of "a lone developer taking on an overly ambitious project and nearly succumbing but yet pulling through somehow" both relatable and inspiring.

That doesn't sound like a particularly healthy reason to follow the development of anything, but it's especially odd to cite as a reason for following LT given that there are games that generate far more drama than this does.

I guess it wouldn't be healthy if I sat here staring at the forum every day, but I just pop by every other month to read up on what's going on. The only reason I'm back already this time, is because I posted something, and someone might reply!

P.S. Not all drama is created equal. I prefer interesting intellectual drama created by highly intelligent people who are pushing themselves to great achievements, over drama created by immature idiots with emotional triggers and poor impulse control. If I enjoyed the latter, then this would indeed be the wrong place to look for it.

Re: [Josh] Friday, April 6, 2018

Posted: Fri Apr 13, 2018 7:54 am

by Talvieno

Well, I'm glad you made an account and posted, The Monk. Welcome to the forums! It doesn't sound like you'll be sticking around for very long, if you only check in every now and then, but I'd be very happy if you did. It's always nice to see new faces, and you sound like you've got a very level head on your shoulders. Happy to see you here!

Re: [Josh] Friday, April 6, 2018

You should make a video on your YouTube channel, it could get a lot more people back.

Personally, I don't think we need more people back here right now. What we do need however is regularly scheduled updates and for the devs to communicate with Talvieno (our Community Manager) regularly. A game play related roadmap would also be nice to have as well.

I do have fears when I see Josh tossing around new ideas for unnecessary game play concepts. I just want LT as it was pitched in the Kickstarter. I don't want to wait another 5 years to see LT release. And IF they are still shooting for a early 2019 release date it would be nice to see game play related development logs as opposed to theory crafting about features which weren't promised to be in LT in the first place. I guess when I say "game play" I'm talking about the re-implementation of mining, scanning, markets, complex AI, zone ownership, and how far along these features are to being completed for the initial release.

Re: [Josh] Friday, April 6, 2018

Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2018 10:15 am

by Talvieno

Ideally, Josh would do all of the above: Post a new video and start communicating regularly. I think that would be best for LT, the community, and himself as well. Hopefully also a roadmap. Of course I can only do so much by myself. But I'm hopeful for the future. I still believe things will turn around - as indeed, they already are in respect to gameplay. Now we just need the community-side stuff to improve too.

Re: [Josh] Friday, April 6, 2018

Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2018 3:53 pm

by Xyloq

Five Years, some drama happens.....bye.

Re: [Josh] Friday, April 6, 2018

Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2018 12:56 pm

by JoshParnell

There are a lot of posts here to which I would love to respond -- and perhaps I'll find the time to do so at some point -- but for the moment I do just want to pop in and restate that the idea was only discussed so as to fill the devlog with a little meat. It would have been rather lean without it. Zero hours of development time have been expended (past tense of that word is annoying, yes??) on this idea, and it will almost certainly stay that way (just like many of my one-off ideas from back in the day!) As you all can see from today's log, development carries on with full focus on the 1.0 promised feature set. No diversions

Re: [Josh] Friday, April 6, 2018

As you all can see from today's log, development carries on with full focus on the 1.0 promised feature set. No diversions

I know many of forum members have been around for a long time, and we are jumpy due to the "dark days" but I do wish people would "chill the &*^@# out" a little, when it comes to how we reply to Josh's Update posts. (yes, I'm chastising you 'forum' )

Josh has very publicly turned things around in visible ways:

pulled things out of a desperate state

continues to make actual gameplay progress

obtained the helping hands he needed

been transparent about it all

exercised restraint regarding falling back in to old patterns

continued to try his level best to meet the deadlines he's set

is posting updates

To me, this means he's doing his part to turn things around, and trust is a two way street. I think we owe him at least as much effort to roll back our hairpin "freakout" reactions just a bit...

I'm not saying to stop cautioning him, or total fanboi-ism, but 90% posts following Josh's "tool update" we're ludicrously overreactive because they were grounded in past fears rather than what Josh actually said in the post. He spent a large portion of the text of that post re-iterating why he was posting it, yet most everyone ignored that and jumped to the conclusion: "OMG, we're 30 seconds from Dark Days 2.0, unless I say something!!!"

The reason I care, is that ANY time Josh spends having to post "calming" replies is ALSO time spend away from LT, and I want him working on that instead.